The 10 Best Airlines in the World, According to Travelers

A week after Beyoncé announced the Renaissance World Tour, I sat hunched over my laptop, with less than two minutes to make a two-thousand-dollar decision.

On Monday 14 August, when the tide is right, an antique sailing ship will manoeuvre through the lock of Plymouth’s historic Sutton harbour and point herself south-west towards the Canary Islands. It will be the start of a two-year voyage around the world taking in 32 ports and involving thousands of people in a groundbreaking geographical project, Darwin200, which aims, among other things, to inspire the environmental leaders and scientists of the future.

You can’t escape the orange. That’s what travelers this summer have been reckoning with — swaths of tangerine, traffic cone and burnt sienna on maps indicating record high temperatures around the globe. Four concurrent heat domes from the southern United States to East Asia descended on millions — Phoenix residents enduring 31 days of 110-degree-plus temperatures. Italians in more than a dozen cities under extreme weather warnings. And in South Korea, at least 125 people were hospitalized for heat-related conditions at the World Scout Jamboree.

When Muslim Advocates and the NAACP issue a joint letter accusing the U.S. airline industry of racism, it’s big news. And when the NAACP, the “nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization,” follows that up with an advisory specifically questioning the racial policies of the nation’s largest airline, American, it’s nothing less than a media firestorm. Indeed, all the major news media covered the story exhaustively. And “American Airlines” has been a trending Twitter topic for several days.

If you haven’t heard about the U.K.’s heated debate on cutting ties with the European Union—dubbed a “Brexit”—you certainly will this week. Britons headed to the ballot box on Thursday and made the historic decision to leave the European Union.

OAG, which dubs itself an “air travel intelligence company,” has released its top-10 rankings of the most and least punctual airlines in 2016. The group analyzed 54 million flight records using full-year data from 2016 to compile the list, and for the purposes of the study defined “on-time” as “a flight that arrives or departs within 14 minutes and 59 seconds (under 15 minutes) of its scheduled arrival/departure time.”

Ever dreamed of packing up everything and moving to another country? Here are the most livable cities in the world, according to a study by The Economist.

The world’s best this, the world’s best that. Everyone has an opinion. But those opinions only accrue real value when they’re aggregated with those of other people, and preferably other people with first-hand experience of the matter being judged.

When experts name the “best” days to travel, they usually name the days airfares are lowest—which often aren’t optimal for most people once you factor in personal convenience and schedule constraints. There’s typically a reason why these ones are the slower travel days.

Jet lag—the grogginess, dehydration, and general discomfort that follows a long-haul flight, has always seemed unavoidable. Especially now, as airlines pack even more passengers into dry, pressurized cabins and decrease their average seat size. Right?

For the twelfth consecutive year, JetBlue tops the list of best airlines in North America. It ranks first among low-cost carriers in J.D. Power’s annual ranking of North American airline satisfaction. Alaska Airlines is ranked highest among traditional airlines for the ninth straight year. Southwest, which is grouped in the low-cost category, had the second-highest score overall.

Looking for a new museum to add to your travel to-do list? TripAdvisor (SmarterTravel’s parent company) has released the Travelers’ Choice Top 25 Museums of 2018, including the top 10 worldwide and the top 10 in the United States, with some surprising frontrunners. The findings also highlight bookable ways to see each winner—think VIP tours and scavenger hunts—with some offering the added perk of allowing you to skip the lines to get in.